Recession? What recession? Best Buy posted its financial results for the fourth quarter of its fiscal year ending February 28th yesterday and all things considered, business looked pretty darn good. In the 12 months leading up to March 1st — the same period of time that saw Circuit City tank and wither away — Best Buy added 213 new locations (net). Crazy. Q4 revenue rang in at $14.7 billion, 10 percent above Q4 in the company’s prior fiscal year. The big sellers? Laptops and cellphones. Profits did decline 23 percent to $570 million however; partially a result of bad exchange rates and $144 million in restructuring and impairment charges. Perhaps the most interesting takeaway was Best Buy’s statement that while traffic in its stores dropped in Q4, customer spending increased. Less people are shopping but those who are spend more money — surprising considering the fact that consumer electronics costs are constantly being driven down.
Early this morning Rogers Communications Inc. posted its fourth quarter 2008 financial and operating results. We’re not at all interested in Rogers Cable and Media and we know all you want to know is its ARPU, churn and smartphone sales so if you please bear with us while we get this out of the way we’ll get straight to it: Rogers posted a loss of $138 million CDN ($109.25 million USD). While it was mostly the Media/Print division that dragged Rogers down (Cable had double-digit growth), Wireless didn’t do much for Rogers in the way of short-term favors as retention costs once again ate up a large amount of cash. Net additions totaled 199,000 with 158,000 of those being locked into lengthy contracts causing a modest 2% increase in ARPU for post-paid subscribers which stood at $74.71. A 36 percent increase in demand for wireless data (which is where Rogers unsurprisingly looks to for 18 percent of its overall network revenue) was attributed as the main factor for the increase. Easily home to the best smartphone line-up in North America, Rogers sold 400,000 units with 160,000 of those going to new subscribers – something which costs Rogers a lot of money in the short-term. At least Rogers can comfort themselves knowing that churn dropped to 1.12 percent. It could be worse, right Bell?
And it just keeps getting worse… While we can’t say we’re the least bit surprised, it’s still disheartening to see a company like Nokia fess up to a relatively dismal sales period. The Finnish handset manufacturer just posted its Q4 earnings report for 2008, and things are not so good. The company posted sales of €12.67 billion, down a savage €19.5 from the same period in 2007. Business revenue was down as well, with a quarter on quarter slide of 26.9%. Yikes. Based on these rather depressing numbers, Nokia has lowered its earnings expectations for 2009. Initially predicting a 5% drop in sales, the company is now expecting sales to drop an even 10% in 2009. Nothing too surprising given then state of the economy at large, but still unpleasant. On the upside, Nokia expects to maintain its market share in Q1, with an overall market share increase expected throughout the course of the coming year. Positive, we suppose, but it’s little consolation in the face of the company’s 2008 earnings. Let’s hope Nokia can keep its head above water without cutting too many jobs over the coming months.
